Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends Review
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SpectralShock
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There haven’t been many racing titles lately that focus on a specific manufacturer. Such design introduces obvious limitations and places itself firmly in a niche for fans of the particular brand. However, Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed managed to pull it off back in the day, so there’s no reason not to give Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends a fair shot. Developers Slightly Mad Studios return after a stint with the Shift spinoff of Need for Speed franchise, and use the same simulation engine to power FRL. The end result, however, is lackluster – a title that can only be recommended to fans of Ferrari, and even then just for the cars and authenticity rather than actual racing.
Although it has the Test Drive franchise branding, FRL can be safely considered a standalone product, and has no connection to the most recently released Test Drive Unlimited 2. Ferrari Legends focuses on Ferrari’s history across almost all of the racing disciplines, including Formula One and GT, as well as ages, including Gold (1947-1973), Silver (1974-1990), and Modern (1990-2009) era cars and tracks. All in all there are about 50 cars in the game, with every corner of the manufacturer’s long and proud history showcased at one point or another. Similarly, the game has just over 30 circuits, but many are repeated from different eras. Yes, perhaps the background scenery and some track conditions change, but unless you’re a hardcore history buff, the track selection often feels repetitive and small in number.
The developers stuck with familiarity for Ferrari Racing Legends, so the game is based on closed circuit racing. Putting the player in the shoes of an up and coming driver, you are tasked with proving yourself to the Ferrari owners in order to become their test and race driver. That’s about as far as the story goes, a minimalistic effort – much like many other features, as we’ll soon discuss. Unlike Shift 2, there are no stats to worry about or ranks/XP to gain. Instead, your progression through the offline career mode is split into three areas – one for each time era. You can independently progress through any of the three eras at any time.
Unlike a typical racing game, the events in FRL are challenges instead of races. These events do include regular races against opponents, but also time trials, head to head, follow (stay within set distance of single opponent), overtake (overtake set number of opponents starting in last place), and one (last place eliminated every 30 seconds). All of the events where you’re given a fair start against AI (head to head, regular races, follow, and one) work well enough and there’s nothing in particular that stands out. When it comes to timed or special events however (time trials and overtake), you’re in a world of hurt. The game is grossly imbalanced in difficulty of these events’ objectives, making them completely frustrating and beyond reasonable. The game offers three difficulty settings, which give you a little bit of leeway, but there are still difficulty spikes so high you could see your house from there.
With such frustrations, and the limited way to progress through the game, a problem presents itself. Sooner or later, you’ll be stuck on a particularly annoying time trial race. And since the career is strictly linear, there’s no way to skip this race and progress. The only thing you can do is switch to another era – but once you hit a wall in all three, there’s nothing left to do. Only thing to be done is try again and again in every era and see which you can beat first (or if at all) and finally unlock a new event. Completing events earns you medals, number depending on selected difficulty, that unlock new cars and tracks. Depending on how much frustration you want to experience, chances are you won’t unlock all the extra cars and tracks in the game due to lack of medals.
Part of the difficulty problem lies within the gameplay itself. The Shift 2 engine (if you recall from my Shift 2 Review) was already rather unremarkable, but here it falls to budget levels. The controls and driving physics feel a big sluggish and a bit touchy, but can be OK once you’re used to it. But the game is not really a simulator that it tries to be – cars still feel like they begin to drift way too easily. AI (much like in Shift) is completely sterile and has little interest in anything but following the race line. Bump them, and you’ll be looking the wrong way in about half a second thanks to overdone collision detection. Control customization options are minimal, and you can’t even select driving assists. Once again there are just three difficulty settings for controls, and they dictate what services (ABS, traction control, etc) will be turned on for the player.
You can head online as well to meet up with other Ferrari enthusiasts – of whom there are apparently not many. Through our few weeks with the game since launch, there’s been barely a soul online to race against, and the few matches that we managed to get into consisted of mostly AI opponents as well. You can create your own race settings, limit the number of CPU opponents allowed, but at the end of the day it’s just an online race that offers nothing new. There is also a ghost system that sees you trying to beat best lap times by other players, and put yourself on global leaderboards.
Perhaps the biggest reason for anyone to take a drive in FRL is for the cars and tracks. Okay, I should clarify – that reason is authenticity, definitely not the technical visual quality. As mentioned, the car selection is extensive and all the vehicles were reproduced with care and attention to detail (though I don’t claim to be a historical Ferrari expert). All cars feature in-car views as well, and while these are also nicely done, they are held back by the technical visuals. To say that Ferrari Racing Legends looks average is a bit of an understatement. The Shift engine was obviously scaled down for this title; there are no day/night variations or weather effects to be had. Damage models look ugly and very basic. The trees and grass alongside the tracks often look downright awful, being low resolution and minimal variety. Similarly, seating structures and spectators are very basic and often simply motionless. The sound design is equally scarce, as there are barely any menu tracks and no in-race music at all, leaving you listening to repetitive engine and tire noise, a generic race supervisor on the radio, and with spectators also being dead silent.
What could have been a worthwhile spinoff title turned out to be anything but. Although all the elements are there – an epic car brand, experienced developer, and a solid engine – the end result is much less than the sum of its theoretical parts, as each of those elements seemingly lost their qualities somewhere along the way. Ferrari Racing Legends is mediocre in almost all aspects, save for authenticity of the cars and tracks. And as such, its only appeal is to the hardcore Ferrari fans that can put the dated visuals, uneven difficulty, and unrealistic simulation behind them. Those who fall outside this category, and are looking for a solid modern racing sim, should leave this title in their rear view mirror.